Neville Dalton is a journalist and a Portsmouth fan of more than 40 years.

Six games into Pompey's farewell Premier League season and the calls for Paul Hart's head are reaching fever pitch.

No wins; no points; the worst ever start to a Premier League season, and on the brink of being even worse than the Leicester City side of 1983/4.

It's not surprising the knives are out.

But should he go?

Both my regular readers will know I'm hardly Mr Hart's greatest fan, but the damage was done in appointing him "permanently" to the job.

The more blinkered cling to the insistence that he kept us up last season (ignoring the evidence of Pompey's performances; his team selection and nihilistic tactical approach - plus the fact that a handful of clubs imploded even more spectacularly in the relegation run-in, saving us more by default than Hart's genius).

But still he was handed the reins, working in a financial straitjacket that would have sorely tested the most successful of managers, let alone one whose track record in the hot seat was unspectacular to say the least.

Perhaps the full extent of Pompey's perilous financial plight has only recently become evident, but it was clear to many of us that things were desperate even before Tony Adams was given the job of picking up the pieces from Harry Redknapp's incredibly successful - but ultimately costly - roller-coaster ride to Wembley and the brink of oblivion.

The trouble is, the die has now been cast: we're still in big debt; it's far from clear whether our new owner (he is our new owner now, isn't he?) has the wherewithal - and indeed inclination - to plough the necessary funds into our club.

And we're left with the inevitable legacy of financial and football mismanagement - a rag-tag of players, thrown together in a 48-hour period of desperation buying - AFTER what was always going to be the toughest of seasons had already begun!

I'm not sure what anyone expects now.

Many of us realised before the season had begun that this was going to be our last in the top league - at least for some time.

Hart's hands were tied in the transfer market, and the fact that some combination of posturing and financial brinkmanship meant he had to do the bulk of his team-building in the final two days of the transfer window after being forced to offload what remaining talent we had is nothing short of disgraceful.

It's no way to run a club - and hardly evidence that the then owner or his would-be successor really had the welfare of the club at heart.

Hart can't be blamed for any of that.

He can, of course, rightly be judged on the players he has brought in. But that has to be tempered by the severe financial limits imposed on him.

Haunt

Clearly the days of mega-wages and record transfer purchases are long gone.

Which means that what little money he has got to spend must be used well, with not a penny wasted.

The strategy of Hart and Peter Storrie to pick up potential quality players on loans and free transfers was a sensible one.

But when the likes of Niko Kranjcar were reportedly (they never tell us the details) offloaded for little more than a couple of million, you have to be pretty confident you've made the right decision when you then go and sign the likes of Tal Ben-Haim, Kevin-Prince Boateng, Tommy Smith and Mike Williamson for several million more.

They are the signings that may come back to haunt Hart. They plus his team selections and tactics.

Funnily enough, the Hart situation is similar to that in which we found ourselves with Adams.

You acknowledge the difficult position he found himself in, but just how many games do you give a losing manager before attempting to break the spell?

I did not share the views of many of Adams' critics, believing that initially at least, he was producing good footballing teams that suffered their share of the bad luck that Harry's teams rarely seemed to have.

But as his feeble attempts to shore up the defence produced even worse results, even I acknowledged that it was probably time to stop the rot while Pompey still had a chance of Premier League survival.

Eight months on, the run of results makes Adams look like a genius. But quite honestly, what does anyone expect?

Two-thirds of the squad has only been here five minutes; their quality was largely dictated by the financial constraints we're now all only too aware of, and they had to be thrown straight into a relegation dogfight that was already under way by the time they arrived.

Very few managers would stand a chance of moulding them into an instant hit - and even if we could afford such wonder-coaches, why would they come to us in the current circumstances?

Whatever we think of the players Hart has brought in - and I have major reservations about some of them - they inevitably need time. Joining a bunch of strangers - a bunch of struggling strangers at that - is hardly conducive to instant form, confidence and success.

So we ought to reserve judgment on the personnel.

Where Hart does have much more choice - and where it is legitimate to judge him more urgently - is on which of those players he picks and how he gets them playing.

Ironically, for all my criticism of the man, I don't think he can be overly chastised on that score.

Promising

I'm still frustrated that he seems to believe that a single forward, new to the English game - with negligible support from midfield - is going to score the goals that will save us (though maybe the "Carlisle experience" will inform his future selections in that respect).

But with a few notable exceptions, Pompey's teams this season have shown promising glimpses of adventure and purpose that were not previously evident under Hart.

There were patches of play against Manchester City and Bolton Wanderers that boded well. And I thought their most impressive attacking display was at - of all places - Arsenal.

Unfortunately, the midfield and defence were sliced apart at will that day, and that has been a repeated theme ever since, even with Hart's new-look side in place.

While Adams' early philosophy might have been that we'll concede goals but we'll try to score more, Hart's seems to be that we'll risk all on not conceding because we certainly ain't ever going to score many.

Which doesn't exactly leave a lot of room for error.

But should that mean getting rid of yet another manager, yet again only part-way through a season?

Who are we going to be able to attract who can do a better job with the personnel he inherits? And is our owner going to let a new man go through the whole rebuilding process again in January by which time we'll be on the verge of relegation anyway?

Pompey have clearly been resigned for some time to competing in a lower level of football next season.

They've shown faith in the manager on the evidence of his stewardship during the final third of last term.

What is the point of their changing tack now?

As I've said previously, when you stop deluding yourself and resign yourself to the inevitable, you don't get quite so disappointed by the bad results.

You end up looking at the positives, whether just clinging to those more enterprising spells of football during a game; the Benjani-esque endeavours of Frederic Piquionne, or the pinpoint accuracy of Jamie O'Hara's corners, the like of which we've not enjoyed for years.

More important to me now is that someone with the club's best interests at heart does what is necessary to provide stability on and off the pitch.

That will almost certainly not involve Paul Hart as manager in the medium- to long term, but won't necessarily be helped by another panic attack and managerial merry-go-round right now, either.

More importantly still, it will involve eradicating those frightening debts to make absolutely sure we don't sink below Championship level and do not go out of business - and investing in the club's future.

In the meantime, I'm determined to try to enjoy as much of this final Premier League season as I can.